Blogfinger

The Ocean Grove beachfront, Monday morning. It should look different by summer. Photo by Mary Walton

By Charles Layton

In response to increasingly urgent questions about Ocean Grove’s beachfront, the Camp Meeting Association announced Monday that the beach and a large portion of the boardwalk will be open on schedule for the 2013 summer season.

In a press release, the association’s president, Dale C. Whilden, was quoted as saying, “We’re on track to implement a comprehensive beach and boardwalk restoration plan… Our beach will be open on Memorial Day weekend.”

While many towns along our section of the Jersey Shore — Asbury Park, Belmar, Avon and others — have been confidently announcing the commencement of boardwalk repairs, Ocean Grove has until now remained publicly silent about its plans.

Part of Ocean Grove’s reticence has been related to its peculiar ownership situation. While other towns’ beaches are owned by municipalities, Ocean Grove’s is probably the only one in New Jersey that is owned by a private non-profit entity, the Camp Meeting. This places Ocean Grove in a different category for FEMA funding. Indeed, as of this writing it is unclear whether the Camp Meeting will receive any FEMA funding at all for the Ocean Grove boardwalk.

Even so, the Camp Meeting’s Monday announcement said beachgoers can expect the following this summer:

• At the south end, the boardwalk will be fully repaired and operational from Bradley Beach to Ocean Grove’s beachfront office/bathhouse complex at the foot of Embury Avenue.
• From the office/bathhouse complex to the boardwalk pavilion, damaged boardwalk sections will be removed and temporary beach access points will be created.
• Extending from the pavilion to Seaview Avenue, the boardwalk will be fully functional. This area sustained minimal hurricane damage because it was protected by dunes that were reinforced by an underground rubble wall.
• At the North End, from Seaview to Asbury Park, the announcement said, “the potential for a temporary walkway is being evaluated.”

The Camp Meeting statement said that although it considers the rebuilding of the destroyed fishing pier to be important, “greater emphasis is being placed on re-establishing the boardwalk first.”

As other towns made visible progress in fund-raising and boardwalk repair preparations, many in the Ocean Grove community have been concerned that Ocean Grove was lagging behind, to the possible detriment of the town’s summer tourist economy.  Camp Meeting officials had said earlier than they did not expect to have the boardwalk repaired by the 2013 summer, although the beach would be open.

Last Thursday representatives from most of the major civic organizations in Ocean Grove held a meeting to discuss ways to foster more communication and cooperation between themselves and the Camp Meeting. That meeting, organized by the Home Owners Association and Ocean Grove United, included representatives from those two groups and also from the Chamber of Commerce, the Historical Society and the Fishing Club. Attendees at that meeting said the Camp Meeting came in for criticism, in part for its failure to explain to merchants and to the general public about its plans and its prospects for receiving FEMA funding.

Monday’s press release made some effort to answer those concerns. Since the storm, it said, the Camp Meeting “has actively engaged professionals, technical consultants and engineers with expertise in boardwalk and beach reconstruction to develop a three-phased restoration plan. The Camp Meeting has also drawn on a vast array of local expertise, including individuals involved in past rebuildings of the boardwalk, specialists in beachfront maintenance, and an authority on beach dunes who was instrumental in developing the original emplacements.”

The press release shed no new light on prospects for FEMA funding, without which the Camp Meeting presumably will face daunting financial questions.

The question of FEMA funding remains up in the air. Officials of Neptune Township and the Camp Meeting met with state officials in Trenton last week to try to make the case that the Camp Meeting should be declared eligible for FEMA funding for the boardwalk and dunes.

A major problem peculiar to Ocean Grove is the fact that the boardwalk’s owner is the Camp Meeting rather than a municipality. Under FEMA’s rules, as a private non-profit the Camp Meeting is not entitled to funding to restore “recreational” facilities, which is how FEMA classifies the boardwalk. Boardwalks owned by municipalities do not face this obstacle. Neptune and Camp Meeting officials have been trying to offer arguments that would get around this problem. Because the boardwalk is so important to the town’s business interests, “We feel it should fit under an economic category,” Neptune’s CFO, Michael Bascom, told Blogfinger on Monday.

“The cost to rebuild will be extensive,” the Camp Meeting press release said, “and the Camp Meeting will be counting on assistance from FEMA and from the community. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the designated fund to assist with boardwalk rebuilding efforts should make their check payable to OGCMA with ‘Boardwalk & Beach Front’ in the memo line.”

This was the first time the Camp Meeting had mentioned a special “designated fund” for beachfront repairs. Previously, the Camp Meeting had said contributions for storm repairs would go into its “Now and Forever” account, which is a fund for a wide variety of Camp Meeting activities, including religious activities. However, some Ocean Grove individuals and organizations had complained that they were not comfortable contributing to that fund, but would contribute to a fund especially designated for storm damage repairs. Leaders of both the Home Owners and Ocean Grove United had expressed that concern to the Camp Meeting.

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